With statistics showing that 6000 girls in Africa are mutilated daily, 200 million women living with the effects of Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage (FGM/C) and 30 million girls at risk over the next decades, African women take the lead to end these harmful aged practices in the continent through the strategic launch of the Big Sister Movement.

Dr Chris Agboghorowa, Chief Consultant, Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, National Hospital, Abuja, has urged government at all levels to ensure free maternal and child healthcare in order to reduce newborn mortality rate.
Agboghorowa, who is also the immediate past Secretary-General of the Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria (SOGON), made the call in an interview
in Abuja on Friday.

THE Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole has urged stakeholders in the Health sector to support the Maternal and Perinatal Deaths Surveillance and Response Programme, which would provide an evidence-based response for improving maternal and newborn health in Nigeria.
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Nigeria, a country of abundant resources and a leading role in African affairs, still struggles with one of the highest maternal mortality ratios worldwide. Although maternal deaths have declined globally since 1990, about 100 Nigerian women die each day while giving birth.

The vast disparity between the rich and the poor in the country contributes to the marginalization of the problem. Leaving the most vulnerable to a low provision of accessible healthcare and nutrition, the disparity has been reported to be the largest among 16 other African countries.

Stakeholders’ consensus at a three-day meeting by the Network of Reproductive Health Journalists was that the global gag rule, which requires that any overseas organisation receiving U.S. aid do not have anything to do with abortion, was anti-women and should be repelled.

Lamenting the increasing rate of maternal mortality in the country, Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, has described pregnancy and child birthing greatest occupational hazard in Nigeria.

Addressing journalists in Ibadan at a strategy meeting organised by the Network of Reproductive Health Journalists in Nigeria (NRHJN), Adewole said that a nation must attach priority to women and children, adding that 30 percent of Nigeria’s Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) can be prevented by Family Planning (FP).